Ryan Merritt, the new executive director of Career and Technical Education for Ector County ISD, has long wanted to help students find careers they’re passionate about so they can be successful in the workforce.
An Air Force veteran, Merritt joined up after high school and served four years. When he got out, he went to Texas State Technical College to earn a degree in laser electro-optics.
The Waco native then went to University of Houston and earned a bachelor’s degree in industrial technology and then Texas State University for a master’s degree in business.
From Texas State Technical College, he saw the opportunities that were available to students that weren’t available to him when he was in high school.
“I just wanted to be a part of providing students with opportunities to explore careers to find a career that they’re interested in so that they have a plan when they leave high school to enter the workforce, whether that’s continuing their education, or going directly into the workforce into a field that they’re passionate about,” Merritt said.
Now in his 19th year of education, Merritt said he thinks giving students the opportunity to explore careers earlier in their lives and find out whether they’re interested in those fields will help save time and money after they graduate from high school.
ECISD has a large CTE program and they have had to turn students away from courses like welding for lack of room.
Still a recent arrival to the district, Merritt said he had had a chance to visiting the CTE facilities and talk to the leadership and “that is definitely a focus is to try to meet student demand for the career areas that they’re interested in.”
He was impressed with the Sewell Auto Tech site.
“The facilities are first class. The opportunities that students have within that first-class facility are great from the college credit opportunities to the industry-based certifications to the programs that lead them straight to jobs,” Merritt said.
Districts across the state have challenges finding staff in some career areas and then there is the space problem.
“The district is doing the best that we can to find space and to fill that space with equipment that students will need to be familiar with as they enter into a career in that particular field,” Merritt said.
Following his degree from University of Houston, Merritt stepped into a high school for the first time in 10 years and was “blown away” by the opportunities the students had.
“I really wanted to be a part of that educational workforce development. That’s how I kind of view CTE as educational workforce development; being a key role in developing the talent pipeline for the local community, as well as the state of Texas,” Merritt said.
He added that CTE is the front line to growing that talent pipeline and it’s for all students.
“There is some thought that it’s focused on the trades only,” but there are programs aligned to occupations that require four-year degrees, such as accounting and engineering, for example.
One of his goals is to provide students with opportunities to progress through a sequence of courses within a specific program of study.
“As an example, we could use the auto tech example where, I think it’s good for students to take one or two classes in automotive technology, but the goal is for them to take four years within their specific field of study, much like you would taking math or science or English,” Merritt said.
It’s giving the student a chance to take four classes and to “really dive deep into specific career fields, again, to find out whether they’re passionate about it or not.”
Another objective is offering students real-world learning opportunities through practicum experiences, or internship experiences.
“Again, I think leaving the classroom and going out into a real-world setting (allows) students to see if they can visualize themselves doing that job for the rest of their lives. I think that’s super valuable for a student,” Merritt said.
“Industry-based certifications is another big goal at the school district to ensure that students graduate with an industry-recognized credential,” he added. “Overall, I think the goal for CTE really is to prepare students for in-demand, high-wage, high-skill occupations,” Merritt continued.
He said the programs ECISD offers are very strong and the plan is to keep existing programs in place, but continuously evaluate labor market information in collaboration with the local workforce board to ensure that ECISD is offering all the programs where there is a need.
“As time moves on and labor market demands change, we want to make sure that we’re providing those emerging, innovative programs for students that may fill jobs that don’t currently exist,” he said.
Merritt has previously worked for Pflugerville ISD, the Texas Education Agency and Region 18 Education Service Center.
“When I was at the Texas Education Agency, when you thought about West Texas, the district that came up the most was Ector County ISD due to the innovative approaches that the district has into education. I think coming from a district that had to compete for dual credit opportunities for their students with many other districts that share the same community college seeing the relationship between Ector County ISD and Odessa College is something to be proud of, and as something to continue to invest in because students have great opportunities for dual credit both in the core academic areas as well as CTE,” Merritt said.
Associate Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction Lilia Nanez said ECISD is very fortunate to have hired Merritt because he comes to Odessa with knowledge and experience from the district and state level.
“Ryan was the state director for CTE and worked with Commissioner Morath at TEA. He brings a wealth of knowledge,” Nanez said.
Moving to West Texas wasn’t a huge shock since he was stationed at Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo and then Dyess in Abilene.
“I know that there’s different opinions about where West Texas begins and where it ends. But I had some experience in those two cities and so moving out here, there are some similarities and some differences. I think Odessa has everything that I’m interested in needing from the city and it doesn’t have the bad traffic like the Austin area has everywhere you go. The traffic moves faster. But you’re not sitting in stop and go traffic for a couple of hours a day to get to and from work,” Merritt said.
